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Exploration. Unless you’re sitting on the bottom of the Marianas Trench a la James Cameron, there’s not a whole lot of this planet upon which one member of humanity or another hasn’t already set foot. It’s in our very nature to get up, get out, and explore the world around us. But just because someone else has seen somewhere first doesn’t mean we personally shouldn’t explore it for ourselves. That’s why, when boss man Edward Loh asked me if I’d like to drive around Russia for one week with Land Rover, I said yes before knowing a single detail, checking my calendar, or asking my wife. I just knew I had to go.

To celebrate the production of its one millionth Discovery, a vehicle called LR4 here (lame — and only here) in the USA, Land Rover embarked on an expedition called Journey of Discovery. The plan goes like this: Drive the millionth Discovery along with three identically equipped and liveried support vehicles from Birmingham, Great Britain, to Beijing, China, traversing 8000 miles and rolling through 13 countries. Along the way, Land Rover would raise 1 million pounds sterling for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies and pay homage to Barrington Brown, a recently deceased member of a 1955 Land Rover expedition that attempted to traverse the same route in a pack of Defenders, only to wind up in Singapore because political turmoil kept them out of China. This Journey of Discovery would be a seven-week slog beginning just before the Geneva auto show, and, if everything were to go more or less according to plan, would have participants in Beijing in time for that auto show, which was to begin April 23 of this year. As we departed our new friends, they were fretting over an avalanche that had just closed down their route into China. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

At more than 1000 miles, the Russian leg would constitute the single longest section of the journey, so naturally that’s the one we wanted, as more driving is always better. It also happened to be the one Land Rover offered us, and in a country I’ve always wanted to visit, so let’s just call the trip serendipitous.

That’s not to say the other portions of the adventure didn’t sound appealing: Just prior to our arrival, the Discoveries visited Chernobyl and a secret, mothballed Soviet submarine base in the Ukraine. And when would I ever have the chance to visit the “Stans,” Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan? Plus, the western Uyghur region of China seems totally fascinating. But as it turned out, so is Russia. As one of my favorite websites, englishrussia.com, points out, “Something interesting is always happening on one-sixth of the planet’s surface.” All I and my two-man video crew (Duane Sempson and Mike Wilson) had to do was fly to a little border town called Belgorod and hook up with the Journey of Discovery team.

Of course, we never made it to Belgorod.

When we landed in Moscow and somehow got through the cattle call that is a Russian passport control “line,” we noticed one of our tripods was not at baggage claim. Turns out, it got shipped to Washington, D.C. Not the biggest of deals, we naively told ourselves. However, when we presented the equipment manifesto to a very nice but very serious woman from lost and found, she noted that we’d either signed it in the wrong place or stamped it a little too far to the left. Russians, we discovered, take paperwork very seriously. So seriously in fact that customs wanted to confiscate all our video equipment for the duration of our visit. We of course screamed bloody murder/over our dead bodies. To long-story-short this, customs quite happily detained us for over four hours, with each of eight different men walking out of a back room and reflexively shaking his head “Nyet” at our predicament. Finally, we and the remainder of our stuff were released, 10 minutes before our connecting flight.

We spent the evening at a perfectly serviceable hotel near the airport that features hot and cold running brown water. As it turns out, brushing your teeth with sparkling water feels kinda neat. At 7 a.m. the next day, a chain-smoking man named Ivan from Land Rover Russia picked us up in a Range Rover to meet up with the expedition team. “We call this road the drunk road,” Ivan said as we made our way south. His English was poor and my Russian is limited to six words, so I never ascertained if the “drunk road” earned its moniker because it’s curvy, or because everyone driving it is drunk. Or both. We wound up in a rural town called Chern. Even though I would soon become part of the expedition, I have to say that, when the four white SUVs that make up the Journey of Discovery convoy rolled past us, it was an impressive sight. While looking not quite military, there was definitely a sense of imperial purpose about them.

Ah, yes, the Discoveries themselves. To ease the trickier border crossings, the four vehicles were all Russian spec. They started life as standard Discovery 4s, with the shared-with-Jaguar 5.0-liter, 375-hp V-8 and every factory option ticked. Not only does the gas motor make them (relatively) quick, but it sidestepped the likelihood of underrefined diesel fuel they’d likely find in places like Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. They were each upkitted with roof racks, extra lighting, winches, and four fuel cans apiece plus an extra spare tire, and packed to the gills with equipment, some of which Land Rover didn’t want publicized until the trip’s end — stuff like tracking beacons, satellite phones, and more that I promised I wouldn’t disclose. Let’s just say they’ll be safe traveling through some of the dodgier bits of the ‘Stans. All in all, each Discovery was loaded down with about 1 ton of gear and crew, putting the gross vehicle weight right near 8000 pounds (a naked Discovery with the 5.0-liter weighs 5744 pounds). We weren’t exactly treading lightly. Still, as I would discover, even with the extra pounds, the Discovery is almost the ideal car for Russia. Almost.

We left Chern and headed across a totally snow-covered one-lane semi-road. The going was brutal, with tires spinning wildly in knee-deep puddles of slush. Thanks to the locking center and rear differentials (and no thanks to the extra weight), our convoy eventually made it to our destination: a Soviet car museum! Wait, let me rephrase that, a very Soviet-style outdoor Russian-car “museum,” which consisted of 200 or so rotted-out Ladas and Moscovichs sitting in two feet of snow. Even with the collection’s less-than-good condition, and even though I was (stupidly) wearing Converses, I was thrilled, as I’m a big fan of weird, old Russian cars. Sad to say, there were no ZIL 111 (the ’55 Packard-looking limo favored by Khrushchev) or ZIL 4107 (the impossibly long and imposing rectangular limo Chernenko and Gorbachev rolled around in). There was, however, an ErAZ 762, a sort of Soviet-era party van that usually featured a flower-power-influenced floral pattern on the seats. When you’re talking Soviet cars, the seat fabric is often the most interesting part. Unless you’re talking about the UAZ 452 AWD van (the ambulance in the Helen Mirren spy flick “The Debt”), which just might be the coolest car, well, ever. So says me. While the “museum” didn’t have any, the Bukhanka (meaning bread loaf) is still in production. They were everywhere.

We overnighted in Tula, home of Leo Tolstoy, in a hotel on the author’s family’s property. The only weird thing was that attached to our hotel was another building that had literally crumbled. Duane and I stayed up drinking Ukrainian vodka with some new Russian friends. Well, we Americans drank vodka. The Russians to a man (and woman) preferred Jack Daniels. Go figure.

The next morning, it was the road to Moscow, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how truly and totally abysmal most Russian roads are. But as bad as the roads between Tula and Moscow seemed at the time–and we’re talking crumbling two-laners with listing, swerving semi-trucks that seem to take joy in moving toward you as you attempt to pass–they were actually pretty good compared with what lay ahead. When we made the 600-mile trek to Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), we routinely swerved around potholes as deep as Russian philosophy. We then swung back by the airport to retrieve the lost tripod (taking only two hours of additional paperwork) and on to Moscow, where Team America, as our new British friends dubbed us, had a nice Swedish dinner with expedition leader Jeremy Hart. When the four of us returned to our hotel, it was surrounded by fire trucks, and a man on a megaphone was saying, “There’s no more fire, just smoke. You may return to your rooms.” Several men in bathrobes were drinking beer and smoking in the lobby. Apparently, a refrigerator had caught fire. No big whoop. The upside was that the hotel gave us all free drinks for the next two hours.

I knew I’d like Moscow, but I wasn’t fully prepared for just how much. To paint in broad strokes, it’s got the grit and energy of New York, the beauty and grandeur of Paris, and the sheer size of Los Angeles. More than 12 million people call it home, and Moscow sizzles with possibility in a way that only a great city can. Which is why I’m still shocked and humbled that I was allowed to drive the 1 millionth Land Rover Discovery onto Red Square. When I was growing up, the only video ever seen of Red Square had approximately one million red army soldiers marching on it, all saluting Brezhnev. The only vehicles that drove on it were either tanks or those crazy six-wheeled Soviet missile launchers. Yet here I was, behind the wheel of Discovery number million, making a U-turn 200 feet from Lenin’s tomb. I smiled for the cameras and waved from inside the Land Rover — throngs of Russian media had gathered in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral to report on us — shocked at how not only lucky I was at that moment, but how lucky the world is now that the two superpowers are no longer at each other’s throats. Red Square is where we used to have our missiles pointed. This very spot was the Evil Empire’s Park Place. Not only did the West win the Cold War, so did the Russian people.

I’ve long heard stories about how awful Moscow traffic is. But, and maybe I’ve lived in Los Angeles too long/spent too much time in London, I didn’t find Moscow bad at all. In fact, I really enjoyed the driving. First of all, compared with the countryside, the roads in the big city are as smooth as glass. And instead of just two-lanes roads, we routinely saw city streets that were 10 lanes wide. The biggest we saw was 14, seven lanes in each direction! It’s just an awesome sight. As for the traffic, it never stops unless you’re at a light, and we sat at one light that lasted more than 10 minutes!

Instead, there’s a flow, a dance, a rhythm to the traffic that was fun. The cars just find a way to move, even if that means turning two lanes into three. I’ve decided that SUVs make more sense in Russia than anywhere else on the planet. To put it kindly, the roads and the weather are unpredictable. Harsh, too. However, Moscow ranks behind only Tokyo as the most expensive city to live in on Earth. As such, the Discovery seems a little declasse, a little down-market. For instance, if our four Discos hadn’t been part of a huge media hustle, they wouldn’t have been parked in front of the hotel with the mung-covered Rolls-Royce Phantom. But even so, the Range Rover may be the perfect car for Russia. It has the off-road chops to deal with the severity of the countryside when you go visit your dacha, but it also has enough curb appeal to attract the attention of the most discerning devushka. That is until that new Bentley SUV shows up.

As for the Journey of Discovery, last I heard, all’s well in Kazakhstan.

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